APRIL 26, 1999:
Over the last six years, the United States has indirectly or directly waged war in almost every corner of the planet--in, for instance, such far-flung places as Afghanistan, Somalia, Colombia, Indonesia and Yugoslavia.

Unless you're a close reader of international journals such as
The Economist or the Asian Wall Street Journal,
it's likely that you haven't heard of an American war that has
been raging unchecked for all those six years: a war to make Europe
safe for American bananas.

At issue, as far as the United States is concerned, is the European
Union's selfish view that Europeans should eat bananas grown in
former European colonies and distributed by European firms. American
banana firms such as Chiquita and Dole take a different view:
they hold that the world should gobble bananas brought to them
courtesy of the world's sole superpower--bananas produced by American
client states in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

American muscle stands behind these bananas from the American
empire, and this is no small matter. If you thumb through the
pages of just about any standard history of Latin America, or
the collected poems of Pablo Neruda, you'll see that powerful
American concerns like the United Fruit Company once controlled
the fates of whole nations--whence the term "banana republic."
The brand names have changed, but the politics have not. A few
weeks ago American soldiers landed on St. Vincent, a former British
colony that lies southeast of Puerto Rico, to destroy the island's
thriving marijuana crop. In the inevitable ensuing collateral
damage, those troops torched a few banana groves as well, just
to press the point. One small irony, a well-heeled St. Vincent
grower told The New York Times, is that many islanders
turned to growing pot only because they were tired of playing
banana politics with trade representatives from Washington and
Paris.

Europe's refusal to allow American bananas to slip into its lucrative
markets, American trade representatives argue, is costing American
firms upward of $520 million a year. Those representatives complained
to the World Trade Organization, bankrolled largely with American
dollars. Not surprisingly, the WTO ruled in the first week of
April that Europe's disdain for American fruit is a violation
of international law.

But American banana boats aren't steaming eastward just yet.
The European Union plans to appeal the WTO ruling, and in the
meanwhile European fruit stands remain resolutely closed to non-European
fruit. And the war has begun to spill over into other sectors
of the economy. The Economist, normally a friend to almost
all things American, warns, "America's bully-boy tactics
will stiffen European resolve in disputes over beef and much else."
Those tactics include the United States government's slapping
retaliatory import tariffs on a range of European goods ranging
from Italian prosciutto to French handbags to Scottish wool sweaters.
There has also been talk of extending the tariff to cultural imports
such as films, objets d'art, books and magazines.

This means that it will cost just that much more to read about
the banana wars in the first place, since for the most part the
American media have studiously ignored the absurd and embarrassing
story, one that is all too familiar: American agribusiness, already
subsidized to the hilt, cries that the world isn't playing by
its rules, and the American government jumps to see that its products
are dumped on an unwilling international market. Today bananas,
tomorrow other fruit: China has just acceded to American citrus
growers' demands that its markets be opened to gringo oranges--and
this in a country where citrus has been grown in abundance for
thousands of years.

We will never know the whole story of the banana wars. We will
probably never know how the corporate mind of the banana giants
works, either, thanks to a strange court case that is now being
played out in Cincinnati, Ohio, the home of Chiquita. A year ago
the Cincinnati Enquirer published a series by veteran investigative
reporter Michael Gallagher, who exposed some of the company's
brutal business practices in Central America. Some of Gallagher's
information came from the company's internal voice-mail archives,
to which Gallagher had gained access through passwords and codes
provided by an unnamed informant within the company.

Chiquita sued the Cincinnati Enquirer, which, in the manner
of contemporary corporate journalism, fired Gallagher and shelled
out $10 million to Chiquita to settle the case. Chiquita lawyers
then hauled Gallagher before the bench, demanding that he name
his source. In the manner of a contemporary save-your-ass-and-go-into-public-relations
journalist, Gallagher complied, naming a "disgruntled former
employee." That unfortunate helper is now requesting that
he be protected by Ohio's shield law even though Gallagher refused
its shelter. He has also promised to sue the newspaper and Gallagher
for breach of contract in revealing his identity.

Ponder it all the next time you unsheath a banana, a noble fruit
suddenly blackened by evil and corruption.